An Ode To The Freakin' Awesome 90s!!

So I was going through some old stuff in storage today and had a chance to walk back in time. As I dusted away old books from high school and earlier, I got to visually reconnect with mementos, keepsakes and odd knickknacks. The things from the 90s though gave me a brief, nostalgic, warm, fuzzy feeling. These sure were some good times for those of us who can remember them. Here are some cool things I remember from back then. Or at least what I remember as being the nineties.

1. 3.5" Floppy disks. Who didn't have one of these? I kept all my secret stuff and important documents on one of these. Who could tell a teenager that cheat codes to Super Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat and a Word 95 document with two pictures of Pamela Anderson in her Baywatch uniform was not priceless and classified?

2. Baywatch. No further comment needed.

3. Bass singers in quartets like Boyz II Men's Michael McCary. I really liked the deep-voiced spoken lines interjected within some songs. Like, "Baby, you know I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you." You could barely hear or understand what he said sometimes but it was still so dang cool. So were Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson. Good stuff to make mixed cassettes for that special girl. Nothing tops a move like that! I dare you Mr.e-Harmony guy with your fancy-smanchy ads. By the way, "I'll Make Love To You" was a number one certified love and baby-making song then. So I heard.

4. Cassette players. Mixed CDs. Even better mixed cassettes. What more profound way to truly show your love for someone. Do you know how hard it was to make one of these? To try and record from the radio then stop it on the right part till the radio was playing the other song you wanted. If you were really lucky, you even had another cassette to 'dub' it from or to. Or whatever we did with those double cassette thingies.

5. Walkmans. I had to put these by themselves. Back then, these were the coolest things ever! Cooler than even Push Pops. They too came in so many different colors but also different shapes and sizes. Imagine that. I remember walking downtown listening to mine and stepping proudly in my high top sneakers. Man, I was the dude! Till I had to stop and change my cassette to side B. Or the batteries began to die - evidenced by the music slowing down or that hard click of the play button coming back up.

6. Shows like Pinky and the Brain, Urkel from "Family Matters", Step by Step, The Simpsons, Dinosaurs (I'm the baby!), Chuck muggereffin Norris! and that super Roundhouse Kick with the special sound effects and slow-mo, David Carradine as muggereffin Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (didn't realize he died June 3rd 2000 - R.I.P. - You were the muggereffin man!), Boy Meets World, Saved By The Bell, Ren & Stimpy, Two Stupid Dogs...this list could go on and on. What was more exciting was being able to record these on VCR to look at later.

7. VCR. This too must also go by itself. What was cooler than VCR? Definitely not that outdated Beta rubbish those older kids then talked about. I would remember blowing them sometimes to make them work like I did my friend's Nintendo cartridges when Mario went fuzzy. What was way cooler were those cool rewind machines they had. My uncle had a red miniature Ferrari one that you opened the engine and put the VCR in and presto! It would whirr and whirr then rewind. That's technology for you. Top that you 'new millennium' kids! Yeah. I dare you.

8. Y2K Fever. This brought on so many crazy theories about what would happen. Even better was the number of different ways people said they were going to spend it. Party like it's 1999, I guess?! Why not. I think with all this current Mayan buzz, we'll need a remix by TAFKA,Prince or WTH ever his name is. I'll probably bump "Party Like It's 2012" when I'm driving.

End of Nostalgia. For now. So, Back to the Future (I,II & III - great shows!). Aargh!

An Ode To The Freakin' Awesome 90s!!